The imagery paints a picture that anyone who’s been to the Indianapolis 500 would recognize instantly.
There are the “Coke Lot campers with bald eagle bandanas” and the “earbud-in-clutched fist pumpers.” Race fans will recognize the “concession yellers hawking cold brews” and the “granddads with ledger pads in suede cases and locked zippers.”
At one time, a majority of Indiana residents were the “kid that’s stood along the stretch — with toes on top of a cooler and their fingers gripping the fence.”
Poet Adam Henze summed it up in his first line: “This poem is for the track folks who just love the smell of Ethanol.”
Henze’s ode to the raceway was chosen as the official poem of this year’s 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. The honor was the latest in a string of successes that the Bloomington-based writer has enjoyed, transitioning from performance slam poet to doctorate student in performance poetry at Indiana University.
Henze will host a poetry workshop and do a reading of his work at 6:30 p.m. Nov. 21 at the Trafalgar branch of the Johnson County Public Library.
Before his appearance, Henze shared his thoughts on writing, slam poetry and capturing the Indy 500 in verse.
Q&A
» How did you get to become the official poet for the Indianapolis 500?
I saw that some friends were sharing an announcement about a poetry contest to be the official poet. I didn’t grow up in Indianapolis; I know that the Indy 500 is a big deal, and I’ve been to a couple events, so I at first saw it as a cool opportunity.
» So without that connection, how did you want to write about it?
One of my best friends when I first moved to Indianapolis is obsessed with the race. He watches all of the pre-races, he’s the one there in the stands all the time. I go to sporting events, but I like to watch the people who love it. I feel like an ethnographer. So I interviewed my friend like it was an ethnographic study, asking him why he loved the Indy 500 and what resonated from his childhood.
» What inspired you to be a writer in the first place?
I came from a very reading-heavy household — my mom was a librarian, and my dad is an avid reader.
» How did that lead to your own writing?
I used to dabble a little bit in reading and writing, but what really led me into it was I was on my school debate team. I saw that there was a platform for young people to talk about issues of identity and issues with politics. I was really drawn to that. I ended up going to school at Western Kentucky (University) on a speech scholarship and taking it really seriously.
» Then how did you go from speech to poetry?
I would do some interpretive events in speech, poetry and dramatic interpretation, things like that. I would memorize other poets’ poems, and that was right around the time Def Poetry Jam came out, in the early 2000s. I saw that I was performing these poems with more enthusiasm as those guys. Why not write a poem like them too?
» How did that work for you?
I had written very bad poetry in high school, and then I went to college and got better. After I graduated as an undergrad, I decided that I wasn’t really ready to be done writing or ready to be done performing, so my friends and I started a poetry slam league there. I ended up going to a lot of national competitions.
» What is slam poetry?
Slam poetry was started by a construction worker in Chicago who really thought that we’d lost a place for traditional and pragmatic poetry — that it had gone this academic way and alienated people. He wanted to give poetry back to a wider audience. So what a slam does; the audience judges a poem from a zero to 10 scale, and that’s really just a way to empower the audience.
» What’s your approach to writing a slam poem?
When I’m writing a piece for that, I write pieces that I know will primarily exist on a page, that I’ll publish or research poetry that I’m doing now. But I also know that I’m writing a piece that will be performed. There needs to be an intro or hook to pull people in, there needs to be a crescendo, a resolution, and then by the end of the poem, I want the crowd on their feet.
» What do you write about?
Once you perform your poem, it belongs to the audience. So I try to think about things in that way. A lot of people use poetry to talk about how they’re different from everyone or how they feel marginalized or left out, but if you want to be successful in a slam competition, you need to think about the things you relate to as an audience, where you can build solidarity.
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Adam Henze
What: A presentation and reading by Henze, a professor and doctorate student at Indiana University, who specializes in slam poetry. Henze wrote the official poem for this year’s 100th running of the Indianapolis 500.
When: 6:30 p.m. Nov. 21
Where: Johnson County Public Library, Trafalgar branch, 424 S. Tower St.
Cost: Free
Information: jcplin.org
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